Editor's introduction: A few days ago, "filter attractions" and "grass pulling lists" made a lot of noise on the Internet, and were young people's consumption decisions affected? The author of this article will tell you from three aspects, the current young people's consumption logic, consumption habits and other content, let's read it!
It's easy to plant grass, but it's hard to pull grass.
Because the convenient existence of "planting grass" platforms is becoming a new cost of decision-making.
"Often several platforms will look at it together, first go to some platforms where there are many influencers to search for what is there, and then go to the public reviews to see the comments and pictures." You can also watch more videos, and the filters in the videos are relatively less exaggerated and outrageous. Chen Hua, who was born in 1996, often plants grass online or actively or passively, and then goes offline to pull grass, in addition to the above-mentioned platform active filter method, she also added: "That kind of beauty is unreal, the color saturation of the photo is particularly high, basically directly skipped." ”
Local coffee shops, roasteries punch cards, travel tourist attractions where to play, where to live, what to eat, these decisions Chen Hua basically decided on major online platforms, and the cost of decision-making became high because of the "filter" problem.
Recently, a certain platform has been controversial about "fake grass planting" and "filter attractions". Regarding the problem of filters on the platform and related reports, many places have been reported, and I will not repeat them here. Before the incident was exposed, many views equated the consumption concept of young people with the trend of Internet celebrities, and emotional and impulsive consumption were the labels of young consumer groups. However, the side of the incident reflects that there is not a small number of people who have a direct demand for planting grass, and when young people return to the real consumption scene offline, the consumption of plain face after filtering is a rational demand.
Penguin Think Tank report survey report shows that 22.6% of Gen Z said that they have not yet consumed non-essential consumption, while the proportion of Gen Z who believe that their monthly non-essential consumption accounts for 1%-20% of total expenditure has exceeded half, and only 13.4% said that their non-essential consumption has reached more than 30%. The report also notes that, overall, Gen Z consumes more rationally, with the average proportion of non-essential consumption maintained at a low level.
Rational consumption is the main feature of young consumer groups.
Well, in this context, back to planting the grass itself. What is the consumption decision logic of young consumer groups, especially Gen Z? What role does grass farming play in their consumer demand? What are the current patterns in consumer decision-making?
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > path: from planting grass to pulling grass</h1>
Consumption is one of the ways for young people to express their values, personality, enthusiasm, trend, curiosity, imagination, vitality, these keywords all explain the needs of young consumer groups.
In October, Chen Hua, who had just entered the right track of the workplace, traveled to Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou and other places.
"I didn't have the opportunity to travel on business before, but after changing jobs, I suddenly ran around, and I always wanted to experience some local specialties every time I went to a place, but if I always stepped on the thunder, my impression of the city would also be reduced." Chen Hua, who works for an advertising agency in Hangzhou, said.
"Generally, I will first go to a place like Xiaohongshu to see what is there, and then search on Douyin, whether there is a video or the like, and then go to the public review to see the evaluation of this store, confirm that the content on Xiaohongshu and Douyin is correct, and whether there is any discrepancy with the real situation." Chen Hua told us.
Chen Hua, a grass puller, is familiar with the characteristics of several platforms, such as many new products on the Little Red Book, many trendy things come from there, and at the same time, the fish and dragons need to be well identified, and for example, on Douyin, the food or travel blogger's strategy or punch card video is the mainstay, as well as public reviews, Douban, and more comments from users on the top.
Chen Hua's decision-making path is very simple: first query from some internet celebrity grass platforms, comprehensively understand and see what is there, and then go to the UGC-based platform of public comments, look at user reviews and lists, and then make a comprehensive decision on whether to pull grass offline.
We tried to combine Chen Hua's decision-making path with the shopping path of most people in the PwC report, drawing a relatively complete path from planting grass to pulling grass. Of course, there are many people with action, after being planted online, directly to the line to pull grass, to see if these places are consistent with the reality, whether they are "pits".
Its path can be basically divided into "planting grass on the network platform - looking through the product review content - commenting interactively to ask for relevant product information - collecting other relevant information about the product - collecting - searching for cross-verification on different platforms - repeating the above query information steps - asking friends around you for their opinions - pulling grass".
From planting grass to pulling grass decision-making path, Box Lunch Finance Mapping
Planting grass, young people take the first step in consumption decision-making, and under the baptism of consumerism, they become a unique sense of ceremony.
A PwC report points out that driven by fragmented social networking, young people's consumption patterns are also changing. Weededs by friends in the circle or favorite KOLs, and the chopping hand was only a few minutes. Young people are impulsively consuming because of their interests, and they also establish circles through consumption.
But planting grass is easy, pulling grass is difficult. There are also many gaps between planting grass and pulling high-quality grass.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > second, internet celebrities to the left, the public to the right</h1>
The underlying requirement of the grass planting platform is to reduce the cost of decision-making.
"Even if I go to the public review to read the comments, I will read several pages, and then the positive and bad reviews will be looked back and forth, and the one with the picture will look carefully at the details in the picture." Chen Hua pointed to a restaurant evaluation on the mobile APP and said, "You see that this restaurant is the first place in the local cuisine popularity list in the district, but the popularity list can only say that there are many people who go, and it cannot be directly equated with delicious, so you must look at the evaluation." ”
We saw a total of 716 reviews, 418 photos, and 44 with low scores, with a rating of 4.2 stars.
"Seven hundred or so comments is not much, but you can see one or two. In this case, we have to go to see where the bad reviews come from, you see this bad reviews focused on the service, if you don't mind the service, in fact, when traveling, take this as an attempt to experience local specialties, I can also accept. In Chen Hua's eyes, there is no perfect store from the service, product, atmosphere, and experience, to see what you can accept and what you need, it is best to avoid the pit through these apps in advance.
However, under the demand to reduce the cost of decision-making, more and more platforms have emerged, coupled with true and false information, pulling grass has become a kind of luck.
From the report of iResearch Capital Research Institute, it can be seen that according to the content production model, the current content consumption platform can be roughly divided into 3 categories, namely PGC (Professional Generated Content, referring to professionally produced content), PUGC (Professional Generated Content + User Generated Content, referring to "professional user-produced content" or "expert-produced content" and UGC (User Generated Content).
We can find that in recent years, the popular content consumption platform is basically the PUGC model represented by the Little Red Book, celebrities, etc., and the mass UGC model represented by the public review, and this time we mainly analyze the grass logic in these two modes.
The PUGC grass planting model, which is dominated by KOLs, celebrities and some star anchors, mainly drives appeal and purchasing power through content output, and uses the driving effect of content production subjects to make fans and users interested in content, so as to complete the link of planting, disseminating and monetizing.
To put it simply, PUGC is the content output between the professional team and retail investors, we usually say that the MCN organization under the talent, team, talent users, KOC and stars belong to this category, they usually in the form of UGC, the output is relatively close to PGC's professional video, graphic content.
PwC believes that explosive personality expression ultimately requires group identity as a foothold, which means that the traditional "niche market" or "subculture" has received a strong thrust to the center of the stage. When developing or promoting products, brands can no longer limit themselves to the needs of traditional target audiences, but also provide a channel to connect with products for users in a wider range and market segments. These users often have unparalleled loyalty and belief in the expression of values they identify with.
In this case, "consumer opinion leaders" have become very important, which is one of the reasons why models such as influencers and KOCs have become popular in recent years. Under the new wave of consumption, the recent "filter storm" involved platform belongs to the PUGC model.
Under the internet celebrity economy, when "good-looking" and "face value" become traffic passwords, and uncrowned kings. Internet celebrities, KOLs, KOCs, etc. share grass on many online traffic platforms, because they are closer to the lifestyle, their content is easier to monetize commercially, that is, to consume, resulting in a lot of content purpose is no longer a simple sharing of life - so the filter is rolled into a just need.
UGC's grass planting model is mainly based on ordinary consumers, consumers mainly score and evaluate the use, consumption and experience, and the evaluation system under Taobao stores, public reviews, Douban, and Amazon are all the same, and the purpose of sharing is to borrow the public's consumption experience to assist users in consumption decisions.
According to Meituan's annual report, as of the end of 2019, consumers had written 7.7 billion consumer reviews on apps such as Meituan and Dianping, providing a rich reference for decision-making choices for users in the local life service industry.
In addition to the differences in content, the differences in the operating ideas of the two models are also reflected in their respective products.
PUGC's grass planting model that relies on Internet celebrities, KOLs, and KOCs basically has an operating logic of playing with platform traffic through algorithms and content dividends to get more exposure and form grass, thereby driving branding and advertising marketing. With the joint impetus of relevant platform algorithms and recommendation mechanisms, we will create a "net red explosive model manufacturing machine", and then bring back more traffic with the internet red culture, forming a steady stream of traffic rollback.
Therefore, the content production mode of PUGC usually relies on a complete set of platform technical support, traffic support, commercialization model support and so on. The homepage will also be recommended according to interests and tags, and visually it is usually beautiful pictures/videos + text.
The UGC's grass planting model can be regarded as a classic model of Internet content consumption. After the consumer experience, ordinary consumers give their views and opinions in the form of scoring and evaluation, and omit intermediate links such as Internet celebrities, KOCs, and KOLs to achieve decentralized consumption decisions.
However, pure UGC is because most of the content comes from ordinary consumers, the content is mostly less professional than PUGC, and the output frequency is not regular. However, with the help of huge user experience accumulation and low-threshold creation, you can get a relatively true evaluation that meets most people's expectations.
This is the truth given by the large number theorem, when the data is larger, the closer it is to the real situation.
From the product point of view, usually UGC's content needs to be retrieved, and content creation relies on the user's consent. Such platforms are usually not dominated by strong recommendation algorithms. Taking Dianping as an example, the decision-making reference path of its store evaluation is the store name - star rating - evaluation (text, pictures, videos), which has many overlaps with the aforementioned young people's consumption decision-making path.
As for the content produced by KOC, does it belong to the category of UGC? Based on the above analysis, it can be seen that the actual properties of KOCs are more biased towards PUGC, because their actual content creation motivation is carried out for commercial purposes. And these KOCs and head anchors, head Internet celebrities, but also lack of bargaining, quality control and other discourse power, in the recommendation is also prone to deformation.
Originally two paths in the same consumer decision-making process, they came to a fork in the road.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > third, offline grass more elements of the face filter</h1>
Let's answer a question first: Why is it difficult to have an absolute head pattern in the offline local life consumption field, new consumption field or related tourism service industry?
The reason is simple, these industries are decentralized.
There are three reasons for the dispersed industry: one is the lack of economies of scale, decentralized industries have the characteristics of low barriers to entry; second, some industries have the characteristics of economies of scale, such as preferences, changing demand and diversification, different standards; decentralized industries have low barriers to entry, so new companies can often enter and exit. (Strategic Management Ninth Edition, translated by Zhu Wenyi, Chen Jiannan, and Huang Haochen)
Local life services, such as catering, tourism, beauty salons, cover a wide range of needs, large and small. Take the catering industry, the difficulty of the Chinese people is the norm, coupled with the mood of the day experience, the role of the surrounding environment, directly affect the day's dining experience.
From another perspective, this also argues why some platforms have a lot of filter problems – offline local life consumption decision reference content is not so easy to do.
How to find a relatively realistic evaluation before going out to consume, the method has become very important.
< h2 toutiao-origin="h3" > first, more samples are needed to make the results more realistic</h2>
When a restaurant and a destination collect the real feedback of a large number of ordinary users and give it to the public consumers for reference, the information obtained is more valuable than the cookie-cutter "absolute son" and "YYDS" of the Internet celebrities, and it is also helpful to reduce the chance of stepping on the pit.
<h2 toutiao-origin="h3" > second, puGC, you also need to look at the contents of the UGC before making a decision</h2>
If the role of PUGC is to tell you what is, then UGC is to tell you whether the value is worth going.
Or take the public review as an example, the algorithm mechanism determines that the mass model will not batch, centralized output of the collection of Internet celebrity punch cards, the label under the non-recommendation algorithm mechanism is secondary, and the significance of the user's comment number, comment quality and other consumer decision guidance is the focus. Therefore, it is easy to understand that a large number of attractions labeled "Kokakura" will rise on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, rather than being born on public reviews.
<h2 toutiao-origin="h3" > third, refer to a variety of opinions, good reviews, bad reviews to see</h2>
Most people's actual experience opinions, there are good reviews and bad reviews, more practical reference significance than the internet celebrity with filter-style praise, for ordinary netizens more reference, after all, a restaurant, a tourist attraction to make everyone satisfied, is not very realistic. Look at the actual pictures and bad reviews of different users, and then decide whether to pay the bill, such content has become a popular anti-planting grass and anti-filter strategy on the Internet.
Let's look at the individual needs of young people. The decentralized user consumption decision-making model can be timeless, which is essentially a defection to today's aesthetic convergence tendency, and the diversified and rich state presented is in line with the current consumption attitude of young people to show uniqueness and individuality.
After surfing the Internet, young consumers will eventually return to offline consumption and see the real reality after filtering. The evaluation mode of public reviews and Douban can be regarded as "spoilers" for consumers in advance.
"Rather than finding out it's a pit after going there, I'd rather know it earlier and spend more time." Share the secret of doing strategy on the platform for many years and not stepping on the pit - don't just believe the evaluation of one person on a platform, and the influencer is not OK. The more different comments, the closer you may be to the real situation. Chen Hua said.
For Chen Hua, in fact, which kind of grass planting mode and grass planting logic are not important, what is important is to solve her problem - quickly and efficiently find the real good place, less thunder, the best.
Author: Cheno; Public number: Box Lunch Finance (ID: daxiongfan)
This article was originally published by @Bento Finance and everyone is a product manager. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol